DIY cabinet [IKEA hack]

In our home, the room sizes are a bit smaller than you’d expect in a 1930s house. We needed a storage cabinet in one of the living room alcoves for our DVDs but my search for a stylish, practical, not-too-deep and affordable one that would fit the tiny 88cm wide alcove proved fruitless.

I know kitchen cabinets come in 80cm wide sizes, among others, and the wall units aren’t too deep, so you can guess where I went with that! If you can’t find it, make it!

Inspiration:

When thinking about the style of how our DIY DVD cabinet would look, I came across the following sideboards that I quite liked (except ours would be narrower and taller). Wooden doors, white frame, slim black handles, tapered legs… they’re contemporary but with a nod to midcentury which makes them suit lots of different styles.

After constructing the METOD wall unit (80x80cm) with HYTTAN doors, we measured for the panels that would make up the white frame, ensuring the doors would be boxed in within the frame – this makes all the difference with the cabinet not looking like an amateur DIY attempt!

For the cabinet frame, I could’ve looked for made to measure end-panels from a kitchen manufacturer, but as I was already ordering some made to measure wall shelves for another room, I commissioned the same company (Mersey MPP) to make the 4 gloss white panels (aka shelves) that would make up the frame of the cabinet. (If anyone wants a more in depth explanation about how to measure for the frame pieces, please let me know!)
We started with the side panels first, screwing them in place one by one, ensuring they lined up exactly to the top, bottom and back of the cabinet, then attached the top and bottom ones.

Next we attached the legs (they are vintage, sourced from eBay), ensuring the screws were clear of the side panels, and then the slim black handles which are from Ironmongery Direct.

Finally, we secured the cabinet to the wall using the fixings available for free from IKEA to prevent any chance of the cabinet being pulled over by my little kids!

Not a bad price for something that’s just right for our space and requirements, we think.

What do you think? If you didn’t already know, would you have guessed this is primarily an IKEA product? Have you ever done anything non-kitcheny with a kitchen product? Do you also need to bribe your other half to go to IKEA? 🙂

Why am I not getting your updates dammit!?! (Need to check my bloglovin’ account and see if I set it up right!) I totally missed this one so I’m late but it’s freaking genius! You would never know this was Ikea – it looks gorgeous! Really impressive 🙂 xxx

Delighted that you like my IKEA hack, Bertha! When constructed, the cabinet with the doors measured W800mm x H800mm x D382mm. So the side panels of the ‘frame’ were H800mm x D382mm each. The panels were 18mm thick, which made the top and bottom panels W836mm x D382mm. If you’re creating a long unit, do ensure that the legs are sturdy and the cabinet is anchored to the wall. Might be worth having leg support in the middle too. Hope this helps! xx

Thanks very much Sophie, I’m delighted this has inspired you to do something similar! For attaching the sides, we used the second row of pre-drilled holes from the top and bottom (the first and last rows of pre-drilled holes are used to attached the door hinges). First we drilled right through the holes, then rotated the cabinet onto its side (one side facing up) and aligned a side panel onto it. Next we marked through the drilled holes onto the side panel, removed the side panel and drilled short guide holes in the centre of the markings, and placed the side panel back onto the cabinet. Finally we screwed through the cabinet holes into the side panel. We used 4.0x30mm wood screws for the project. Hope this makes sense for you!